The first footage of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug has been revealed at yesterday’s live internet broadcast, although few firm conclusions can be drawn. The subject is certainly sensitive to Warner Bros. with several videos around the web having been withdrawn by Monday morning due to breaches of the Terms & Conditions attached to the production.

It’s OK to tell what happened though and we can report that the footage ends thus, with Thorin declaring:

“We are the dwarves of Erebor. We have come to reclaim our homeland.”

No surprise there then. The trailer finishes on some sound effects that are unmistakably like a dragon, but of course there was no sign of Smaug himself anywhere. I do not think anyone actually expected that, so what did become clearer?

Alongside some moody shots of Gandalf and Radagast in a mausoleum of a cavern, we begin to learn more about Benedict Cumberbatch’s other character in the movie, at least by implication we do anyway, with Gandalf asking why the sword Glamdring, “got out into the world,” only to discover that there’s much more to it than meets the eye, all of which is meant to tie into the Necromancer storyline.

Peter Jackson appeared very aware of the potential problems with the middle film of any trilogy, responding to one fan’s question with:

“It is complicated to do a middle film, but the advantage is … we have multiple story lines … and we can start following multiple characters.”

Sounds enticing, as making a middle film into anything but a filler with untied endings and ragged beginnings can be a problem. Perhaps we will see a few complete stories within the overall arc; who knows? It is now almost legendary that enough footage has been shot to complete several movies.

More will undoubtedly be drip fed us over the coming months and as Jackson revealed this video release ought to be considered first in a series of blogs about the film. First mystery up, doubtless awaiting further examination later is Gandalf saying:

“These tombs were opened from the inside.”

That’s a little mystery that Gandalf is exploring in The Desolation of Smaug, according to Peter Jackson at the event. He also said that Mirkwood is the scariest land they’ll explore in the movie and described Thranduil’s kingdom using concept art. Cinemablend reported that:

“This looked like that same creepy forest but with some castle-like structure in there. The realm itself is underground, but there’s light filtering in– We want it to be grand, like a cathedral. But this is not Rivendell. This is not the friendly land of elves that we’re used to in these movies. Jed recalls his time spent as a dwarf, held prisoner in Thranduil’s kingdom.”

The approach used in this teaser follows the pattern of previous production video blogs, so you will have recognised the strategy by now no doubt. It looks like we can anticipate a steady ramping up of the pressure from now onwards until the finished trailer is put on general release.

I don't really understand why some people disliked the first one. I liked it. And since it wasn't a self-contained story like the first installment of most trilogies, I think final judgment has to wait until the entire story is told.

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I don't really understand why some people disliked the first one. I liked it. And since it wasn't a self-contained story like the first installment of most trilogies, I think final judgment has to wait until the entire story is told.

For one...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fire Me Boy!

I disagree here. I enjoyed it, but I didn't love it. I thought I was a pretty big step down from any of the three LOTR films, and that's partly due to the complete destruction of my willing suspension of disbelief. I can get past these people falling great distances and not being completely broken, but can we get at least some scratches? It was a little overlong, and the pacing was a bit off. A lot of the toilet humor felt forced and out of place.

The casting was outstanding, though, and for the most part the effects were top notch (there's one shot of the Brown Wizard guy on the rabbit sled leading the orcs on a chase that had ridiculously bad FX).

Again, overall I enjoyed the movie, and I'll see the next ones. But it wasn't what I'd hoped, and it wasn't what I expected.

The pacing was the problem for me. It felt like a 2:15 movie stretched out to 2:45. With the LOTR movies I always felt like the theatrical versions were short and welcomed the extended editions, but I have no desire to ever see a longer Unexpected Journey.

First one was just too long. Extending it to three movies is going to make them a ton of money, but it seems it was not the right decision creatively. There's just not enough in the story to spread it out like they did.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug feels like Peter Jackson in crisis. He’s lost in the CGI and story padding, no longer grasping the storytelling basics that made Lord of the Rings work. That trilogy was all about making things fit, and it was a magnificent work of adaptation that pared down and focused a huge story with immense emotional resonance. This is a movie that takes a small story and blows it up like a cartoon character with a bicycle pump in his mouth. Of course it can’t maintain its form. Of course it comes apart.

But how does Peter Jackson not see this? When he’s including the pointless visit to Beorn’s house and he has a sequence where the camera floats behind a big CGI bumblebee, did he ever question what the point was? Did he ever wonder why, in a film that was almost three hours long, he was going to throw in this needless CG shot that tells nothing, that adds nothing, that serves only to give a slight respite from a lame chase story that he shoehorned into the film in the first place?

Congratulations, Millenials - you have your own disappointing Prequel Trilogy. Like the work of Lucas, the Hobbit films have lost sight of what made the originals work as they drown in computer graphics. The tactile world of Middle Earth has become a cartoon; there’s a scene in Desolation of Smaug where one dumb looking CGI superorc is talking to another dumb looking CGI superorc in what appears to be either a CGI room or a space so color corrected as to be essentially painted and I wondered why the hell I was even looking at this cartoon. I felt like I could go to Middle Earth when I watched Lord of the Rings; maybe I could plug in a controller and play The Hobbit, but it would likely be the kind of game where I button-mashed my way through the cut scenes because, honestly, who gives a shit about the story? Not the people who made it.

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